Kingsport FD HazMat becomes first in state to earn new Type II designation from TEMA

KINGSPORT, Tenn. (WJHL) — The Kingsport Fire Department’s (KFD) Hazardous Materials (HazMat) Team has become the first agency in the state to earn a new Type II designation from the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA).

According to a news release from the KFD, its HazMat squad is the first in Tennessee to see a Type II designation under TEMA’s newly adopted standards.

Hazmat teams are “designed to respond to, assess, and mitigate a large-scale, complex, and sustained-duration incident that may involve multiple hazards comprised of known and/or unknown hazardous materials,” the release states.

KFD Chief Scott Boyd told News Channel 11 during a press event on Tuesday that the agency hosted TEMA officials on-site to display their HazMat capabilities.

“They come in and do an evaluation of our equipment, training our abilities to be able to provide HazMat response, and with that, we were able to achieve a Level 2 designation for the State of Tennessee,” Boyd said.

Boyd said with that analysis, TEMA granted the KFD HazMat Team the Type II status.

“Before, what we would have is just basic response; to be able to stabilize. What we can do now, is we have the ability to [go] out for hazardous material spills to make identifications [of] all those unknown products that are out there and to mitigate all those incidents to be able to cap it, offload it, we can do all the testing.”

Type II HazMat teams possess the following capabilities, according to the KFD:

• Intermediate testing equipment, such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) or Raman spectroscopy devices, which can be used to detect and identify unknown solids, liquids, and gases including explosives, chemical warfare agents (CWAs), toxic industrial chemicals (TICs), and narcotics
• Intermediate real-time field instruments, such as volatile organic compound (VOC) instruments with parts-per-billion sensitivity
• Type III team equipment (level below Type II):
  • Basic testing instruments, such as chemical testing kits and testing strips
  • Basic real-time field instruments, such as a multi-gas meter and Photo Ionization Detector (PID), enabling detection of common gases such as carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), sulfur dioxide (SO2), methane (CH4), and oxygen (O2), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) at parts-per-million sensitivity, respectively
  • Printed and electronic reference resources
  • Safety data sheets – SDSs contain information on chemical properties, human health and environmental risks, and handling, storage, and transportation precautions

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